The continued development of remote sites for telecommunications equipment, or other self-contained sites for such equipment, has brought on the necessity of providing relatively small enclosures for housing radio equipment, power converters and backup generators for powering the radio transmission and receiver units. Telecommunications equipment enclosures, particularly of the type used for so-called cellular telephone systems, are typically relatively small buildings which are somewhat self-contained in the sense that they may include their own electrical power supplies or power conversion equipment for the radio communications units within the enclosure and air-conditioning equipment used to maintain a predetermined range of environmental conditions within the enclosure. Typically a relatively tall antenna support tower is associated with the enclosure and is normally supported on a separate support structure.
In fact, heretofore, communications equipment enclosures located at remote sites or "rural" sites, for example, have been supported on conventional foundations such as reinforced concrete slabs or pads. The concentrated weight of the antenna tower has, in prior art-type installations, required a relatively substantial and separate foundation member such as a deep reinforced concrete pier. The installation of communications equipment enclosures at remote sites has made it particularly difficult to provide equipment for drilling a hole of sufficient depth to support a separate reinforced concrete pier of sufficient strength to serve as a foundation for the antenna and its supporting tower.
Moreover, in many wireless telephone equipment enclosures and similar communications equipment installations, the enclosure itself may require to be mounted on the roof of a building or other structure. Accordingly, the separate installation of a tower for the communications antennas also presents problems with regard to providing sufficient space and support structure for such a member. Still further, the provision of separate enclosures and antenna support tower installations also requires a cable conduit "bridge" between the antenna tower and the enclosure which increases the chances for signal degradation that may be created by training the transmission cables over a somewhat complex route between the antenna and the enclosure.
Accordingly, there has been a substantial need to provide improvements in communications equipment enclosures which will eliminate some of the problems of installing these enclosures efficiently and rapidly which has been dictated by the rapid growth in wireless communications systems throughout the world. It is to solving the above-mentioned problems that the present invention is directed.